


from her own ashes became fire

by princessoftheworlds



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Canon-Typical Violence, Deus Ex Machina, F/F, M/M, Sexual Content, Suzie Costello Lives, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29551761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: In one universe, Torchwood Three found the Resurrection Gauntlet early, and Suzie Costello found her darkness and destruction; in this universe, they don't find it until several years later, and that makes all the difference. Suzie picks up the gauntlet, but instead of slowly losing herself to it, she finds a glowing golden goddess - Bad Wolf, and she falls. Oh, how Suzie Costello falls.(Or: Rose Tyler died when she looked into the Time Vortex and was transformed into Bad Wolf. She is light, life, and Suzie is dark, death, and they balance each other out, two halves of the same soul.)
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Suzie Costello/Rose Tyler
Comments: 17
Kudos: 21
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: 2021 Femslash Fest





	from her own ashes became fire

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has taken me three weeksish to write, and that is a-okay, because finally, it is here. The parallels between Suzie with the gauntlet and Rose as Bad Wolf struck me and wouldn't leave me be for several days... and so it ended up as this fic.
> 
> As with many fics, this was a labor of love but also took a village. Thanks to Violet for hearing me ramble about the concept of this fic, Ruairidh for more rambling and an initial read-through. Thanks to my betas Annika and Al for wrestling this beast into shape, and thank you to Zoe for supporting me while I drafted this fic.
> 
> Title from a Nikita Gill poem.
> 
> Without further adieu, I hope you enjoy suzierose!

The call comes in on a Wednesday afternoon, when most of Torchwood Three has been idling about. Owen is feeding his rat specimens - all also named Owen, at Gwen’s behest - while Tosh clicks away on her desktop, having gained entry to Downing Street’s database for the third time this week. Gwen is busy texting Rhys, likely something about IKEA furniture for their new flat, as she mentioned during lunch. Even Ianto has given up the facade of sorting the archives, having disappeared into Jack’s office half an hour ago.

The curtains are drawn, but Suzie, who is sketching out specifications for a Mileran blade for the file in the archives, bets he and Jack are snogging. The two of them are insatiable. They have a whole flat to themselves to snog in now that Jack’s moved out of the Hub, but even then, they couldn’t be more obviously enamoured of and handsy with each other.

Still, it’s better than two years ago when they had been making painfully pining eyes at each other, Suzie decides, but has no more time to ponder that line of thinking, because Jack has suddenly burst out of his office, pulling his greatcoat tightly around him. Behind him, Ianto is discreetly doing up the buttons to his shirt, expression purposefully blank. 

Jack gestures to Suzie and Gwen; they are to join him on this little excursion to the middle of Cardiff Bay, as Ianto fills them in over comms.

As it turns out, a Rift spike dropped something rather large in the Bay this morning, something rather large and detected by local fishermen. It’s up to Torchwood to pull it up via the winch on the  _ Sea Queen.  _

It’s a battered metal chest, bolted shut, that they drag back to the Hub. After numerous scans reveal no abnormalities radiating from it, Suzie takes great joy in whipping out her alien plasma blade and slicing through the thick locks, and then Jack carefully lifts the lid.

Inside, resting on layers of moth-eaten plum velvet, is a glove. A gauntlet, really, looking almost like it could belong to the armor of a knight, made of shiny overlapping plates of a silver metal that none of their technology can identify. There is nary a scratch or dent on the gauntlet, unlike the state of its chest.

“I was really expecting treasure,” Owen snarks. “Not medieval cosplay.” Tosh gives him an amused, fond look, and Ianto rolls his eyes.

Further scans of the gauntlet itself reveals... nothing. It could just be an ordinary gauntlet, taken from any historical museum around Britain. 

Tosh sighs eventually. “One of us is going to have to wear it,” she says eventually, to immediate headshakes from most of the team.

Clicking her tongue, Suzie steps forward before anyone can protest and slides her hand inside, wiggling her fingers, turning the gauntlet this way and that. It sits heavy on her hand but is too cold, as one might expect from something so harshly metallic. The inside feels almost smooth.

“Feel anything, Suzie?” asks Jack with a furrowed brow, but she shakes her head. 

She steps around the autopsy bay, where they are all clustered, carefully dragging the gauntlet over surfaces, feeling for something, anything different.

Like the flicker of a candle, something  _ shifts,  _ just on the edge of her field of perception. She pauses, the team watching her very, very carefully, then changes direction, heading for Owen’s rat cage of other Owens. Suzie reaches gently into the cage with her bare hand, ignoring Owen’s squawk, and retrieves the body of a rat who had been alive as of this morning. She pets the cold fur before setting the rat on the counter beside the cage.

Then she lifts the hand wearing the gauntlet and gently places a metal fingertip on the rat’s head.

“Suzie,” Jack warns, and she knows without glancing at him that the nerve in his jaw is twitching again. She silences him with a raise of her other hand.

There is a cloak of darkness surrounding the rat, draped over it like an inky blanket; that much she can see and feel now with the gauntlet on her hand. Carefully, instinctively, she  _ reaches _ into that darkness, not too far, just a few inches. This rat is an insignificant smudge compared to whatever else lurks in the dark, unseen and unfelt by Suzie but looming and obvious nonetheless. She reaches in and  _ tugs  _ just a bit, and the gauntlet is warm now, and her heart feels that tug, and her blood burns slightly in her veins.

Suzie bites back a sigh, and on the counter, the rat bursts to life, its tail twitching and nose quivering.

“It resurrects,” she says. Tosh, Owen, and Gwen gape at her. Ianto’s eyebrows are raised high. Jack’s lips are pressed together so tightly that his skin is turning white.

The rat only manages to stumble to its feet before it collapses again, dead within seconds.

He strides over and none-too-gently eases the gauntlet off her hand, passing it to Ianto. “We’re sealing this away. Immediately,” he orders, giving Ianto a look that all of them know is not to be disobeyed. He’s their boss now, not their friend or boyfriend. Their captain.

“We should study it, Jack,” Suzie says, but even she knows better. She’s been at Torchwood long enough, been Jack’s second-in-command for enough time.

“No,” he replies, and his eyes are hard. “No one should be playing with life or death. No one should have that kind of power.” He hesitates. “Someone I knew did, once. Someone I love.” Now his eyes have softened and saddened. “She brought me back to life, out of love, but she brought me back wrong. Brought me back permanently. And at the cost of herself. So no one will be using this gauntlet. For anything.”

They all watch as Ianto slides the chest, with the gauntlet carefully placed back inside, into the safe in Jack’s office. Suzie is still chewing away at Jack’s confession; they all know about his immortality by now, but he has never really betrayed how he lost his mortality.

When she returns to her flat that night and lies in her cold, empty bed, she can feel the first tendril of the darkness, warm and shifting like a breath and wispy, wrapping its fingers around her heart.

* * *

Jack - and Ianto, to an extent - thinks he’s clever, but Suzie is cleverer. 

She’s the second-in-command; she knows Jack’s passwords to almost everything, even the ones he and Ianto think the team doesn’t know exist. She’s also a skilled engineer, having helped Tosh revamp the pre-existing security measures in the Hub.

Sneaking into the Hub is child’s play. Breaking into the safe in Jack’s office is a little more complicated but easily enough accomplished using the alien lockpicking device she’s smuggled away from the archives. She can sneak it back in without Ianto noticing; she’s done it plenty of times before.

It’s not that Suzie doesn’t trust Jack and her team, or love them, but they all have lives, families even. Tosh and Owen have stopped dancing around each other. Gwen and Rhys are planning more of their life together. Even Jack and Ianto have moved in together and are clearly hoping for a future together, Jack’s immortal cynicism aside. Suzie is the lone wolf, the only one who can completely devote herself to protecting this dustbin of a city - and the world - from whatever rubbish falls through the Rift, and she doesn’t mind - except for when she does. She’s only shoring up and preparing for that. She has less to lose.

(Funny. Growing in a family as she did, with a father like hers, Suzie Costello always thought she would be selfish, look out for her own best interests, but Torchwood proved her wrong. Torchwood gave her a family. She’s only looking out for them now, along with herself.)

There is a body in cold storage, a recent death from a Weevil attack from several days ago, so Suzie pulls it from its cryo-chamber and debates whether to load it onto a cart and wheel it to the autopsy table. Ultimately, she decides that it’ll be less toil and less CCTV footage to doctor or delete if she stays right in the morgue, right by the drawer.

She hates the morgue, hates the way the chill seeps past her jumper and sweatpants and causes her skin to prick up into goosebumps, but the odd warmth she can feel festering in her chest ever since she first used the gauntlet drives the chill away. She kneels down to unlock the battered chest with the alien lockpick and lifts the gauntlet up, running her hand over the smooth metal, ghosting her fingers over the overlapped plates of the knuckles. 

Suzie slides her hand into the gauntlet and wiggles her fingers, watching the metallic fingers of the gauntlet move as well. The inside is cool against her skin, but she doesn’t hesitate as she returns to standing by the drawer.

The victim - a young man in his early twenties, pale and dead, with three gruesome gashes across his neck and shoulders - has been zipped into a body bag, but Suzie’s pulled him free enough that she can cradle his head with the gauntlet, as she now reaches to do so.

Several sleepless nights have been lost over ruminating on the wispy, inky darkness she felt, so there’s no delaying it now.

Suzie  _ reaches _ into the darkness, into this void between life and death, reaches just a bit further than she had to for the rat, and is surprised to find someone else. Someone who is not the victim. Someone solid and living and  _ warm,  _ but warm in a different sense than the darkness. Warm, like the glow of time and life itself.

But the victim is there too, so Suzie reaches for the victim and  _ tugs,  _ the metal of the gauntlet warming around her hand, the tug resonating in her heart, her blood singeing and singing in her veins.

In the drawer, the victim gasps to life, breathing harshly, his eyes flickering about. “What’s going on?” he pants. “Where am I?” His head lifts up, gaze narrowing in on Suzie. “Who are you?”

Mentally, she begins her count.

_ One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. _

“You’re okay,” she tells the victim, keeping the gauntlet pressed to his head. “You’re okay.”

“There was a creature,” he cries. “Something in the park. I was just walking…” He begins to ramble about the Weevil and pain and death, seeing darkness, but Suzie tunes him out. She feels a gaze burning into her back, so she glances across the morgue.

_ Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. _

There’s someone standing there, a glowing, golden figure with eyes that beam just as bright as the rest of her, but she isn’t painful to stare at, not like staring at the sun would be. She’s gorgeous, welcoming, but not entirely solid, flickering back and forth between two different avatars. One, a girl with blond hair falling in straight sheets to her shoulders and kind, brown eyes that glow amber, dressed in a pink jacket and jeans. The other, the same girl but older, a woman, with her hair in messy braids and her eyes, lined in dark kohl, glowing bright, her flowing robes tattered and faded.

Staring at her pulls time briefly to a halt around Suzie.

_ Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. _

“ _ Make a choice, _ ” the girl - the woman - whispers to Suzie, her voice unexpectedly husky and aged like fine whisky. “ _ Make a choice. Make the choice. _ ”

_ Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five.  _

The man in the drawer continues to ramble and beg and sob. Only the gauntlet pressed against Suzie’s hand, pressed against the man’s head, keeps her grounded. She forces her eyes back to the victim.

His eyes are wide and terrified, his face pale, though she can’t tell if it’s because of the sudden resurrection from death or fear.

“Please,” the victim begs. “My mam. I want my mam. Where is she?” His hands are laid flat by his side.

Suzie’s blood is burning almost painfully now, but the warmth radiated by the figure across the morgue soothes the agony.

_ Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. _

He falls silent, and Suzie stops her subconscious count. She doesn’t need to check his pulse to know that he’s dead. Across the morgue, the figure has faded away, but her warmth still lingers.

Thirty seconds. That’s how long the gauntlet managed to bring the victim back for, but she wonders if the resurrection could be prolonged, could last longer. 

She’ll need to keep trying to see, she supposes. 

Suzie’s gaze flickers across the morgue, where the figure stands no longer, but the lack of presence doesn’t bother her. The woman’s shape is burned into her memory now.

* * *

Suzie sneaks the gauntlet home, and she uses it, uses it on the flies lying about her flat, on the rat caught in the trap she set out last week, even on a dead cat she finds in the alley behind her building.

It’s not exactly work Suzie’s dying to do, more suited to Owen or Ianto who usually deal with Torchwood’s bodies, but she believes it necessary.

The first fly comes back for five seconds, with a lighter  _ tug  _ than the victim or the cat. The second fly lasts a bit longer - ten seconds. By the third fly, Suzie manages to stretch the resurrection out to fifteen seconds, but the fourth and fifth flies seem to prove that that’s the longest the resurrection will last… and that she really needs to vacuum her flat.

The gauntlet is warm around her hand and almost thrumming with life, emanating the same glowing sensation as the unknown figure, but the figure herself has not shown up yet. Suzie figures that the flies are not enough to hold the figure’s interest, so she moves on to the rat.

This time, with the rat, it’s just the tiniest bit easier to reach into the darkness, growing more familiar and oddly welcoming with each attempt, and tug on the lifeline belonging to the rodent. Calmly, Suzie watches as the rat’s tail twitches and it manages to twist to its feet and clamber forward before collapsing.

The rat lasted ten seconds, but Suzie doesn’t have a second rat to try the gauntlet on. Distantly, she thinks that she should feel something about this, some ethical or moral quandary that should give her pause, cause guilt to clog her throat and slow her movements, but she’s always been like this. More rational, less emotional, less easily distracted.

She’s the one to make the hard decisions when Jack can’t; that’s why he made her second-in-command. And it seems that in the last year, she’s been making hard decisions more and more often. Jack’s gone a bit soft. She doesn’t mind. He deserves that happiness with Ianto.

With the rat, Suzie feels an increase in the warmth, in the glow, in the darkness twisted around her heart, but catches no glimpse of the woman and momentarily admits defeat.

She’s walking past the alley on her way home from the local take-out place, bringing back dinner, when she spots the cat. She’s on her knees and pulling out the gauntlet from her bag before her mind even makes sense of her actions.

Like the rat, the cat’s tail twitches, and it lets out the tiniest, most pitiful meow, and Suzie, who isn’t an animal person but would be a cat person if she was, feels a slight shard of regret. It’s quickly driven away by the returning warmth, much more intense than with the rat or the flies. Clearly, the larger or more significant the death is, the more energy it requires and the more warmth Suzie feels.

Which makes it more likely that the figure has materialized this time.

Suzie glances over to the end of the alley, past the plastic bag containing her orange chicken and rice, and finds the figure standing there, entirely the older avatar this time, all messy braids and flowing robes. She’s watching Suzie intently, those brown eyes glowing with more of an amber hue. Suzie dares not breathe, doesn’t even dare flinch; she won’t risk accidentally lifting the gauntlet from the cat’s head and causing the figure to disappear.

The figure’s lips - soft-looking, Suzie notices, then wonders why that’s what her eyes narrowed in on - curve into a wolfish smile, all gleaming, white and predatory. It suits this avatar, Suzie decides. This wolf smile would not have suited the younger girl.

“Who are you?” Suzie calls to her. “Tell me your name.”

The figure’s wolf smile grows wider. “Bad Wolf,” she replies, her voice carrying past the hustle of the street behind her, straight to Suzie. “You may call me Bad Wolf.”

“What do you want, Bad Wolf?” asks Suzie, and the  _ tug  _ on her heart, the burning in her veins, briefly seems to cease. By her feet, the cat is attempting to stumble to its feet, its tail flicking.

“You’ll have to try better than that, Suzie Costello,” Bad Wolf tells her. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

The cat collapses, dead again. Bad Wolf dissipates into a sudden sea of golden flecks that swirl up into the sky and disappear, but this time, Suzie is there to watch her go.

Rising to her feet, taking hold of the plastic bag again, Suzie shakes her head. “Cryptic arse,” she says to herself. “As if I don’t have enough of that with Jack.”

* * *

That night, Suzie dreams, which is unusual in itself. All her life she’s rarely dreamed, even when she was a child. But it’s not as if she sleeps full nights either, not on a nightly basis. Not since she began at Torchwood, not since the nightmares began.

So that night, Suzie dreams of Bad Wolf, of being entangled with her so closely that she can no longer tell where her body ends and the other woman’s begins, their legs brushing together and their lips moving passionately against one another’s.

Suzie’s eager hands rove everywhere, over soft curves and the smooth swell of breasts and down the arc of Bad Wolf’s spine. Her mouth follows, peppering kisses over the inches of skin her hands cannot trace, until she has traversed her lover’s body, has mapped out and memorized Bad Wolf so well that Suzie can picture her in her mind.

Hushed whispers and encouragement are exchanged, and then Suzie delves her hands between the other woman’s thighs, until she can feel just how much Bad Wolf  _ wants  _ her. Just as Suzie can feel the warmth and wetness between her own legs as proof of how much  _ she  _ wants Bad Wolf.

Their coupling extends beyond the physical. When their lips meet again, when Bad Wolf gasps into Suzie’s mouth and tightens her arms around Suzie’s waist, the desire, the passion, resonates in Suzie’s soul.

The mysterious Bad Wolf sings a song of golden time, a song so beautiful and ancient but also so new and beyond even today, an  _ aching _ harmony which Suzie can hardly bear to listen to, yet cannot dream of no longer hearing. And as Bad Wolf’s body writhes beneath hers, Suzie becomes aware of a new melody, a deep, low-pitched humming to counter the airy richness of Bad Wolf’s, and she remembers the darkness, the darkness where Bad Wolf resides, and she lets go.

Bad Wolf pushes Suzie into the sheets, and Suzie goes easily, her back arching and her hands tangling in the other woman’s blond hair. The heat of Bad Wolf’s mouth against hers is exquisite, and she tastes honey-sweet. Suzie’s never been particularly fond of sweetness, much preferring all things sharp and bitter, but she thinks she could become addicted to this taste, to Bad Wolf’s mouth.

They make love to each other, bodies moving together in passion. A generous lover, Bad Wolf works Suzie higher and higher, closer to the oblivion of orgasm, where she can blissfully and briefly fade, her mind blanking out. But just as Suzie is teetering on the edge of the precipice, prepared to fall, she…

... She wakes, lurching upright, her body slick with sweat, the inside of her thighs slick as well with a different sensation. 

Gingerly, she sits up against her headboard, mindful of the  _ aching  _ between her thighs.

Christ, she can remember how much she  _ wanted  _ Bad Wolf, in a way she’s never wanted in a long time, not since she cut off her affair with Owen. And she’d never wanted him in the way she knows she wants Bad Wolf.

The wispy, warm darkness that’s twisted itself around her heart, that’s crept into her blood, burrowed into her bones… it  _ wants  _ Bad Wolf with a dangerous, burning passion that Suzie knows should scare her, terrify her, even.

But for some strange reason, Suzie doesn’t care, feels numb to anything other than the memory of Bad Wolf writhing between her, her beautiful face contorted with desire. 

Suzie delves her hand between her thighs, playing her body like a fine-tuned instrument, one she knows better than any other, and she cries out for Bad Wolf when she finally teeters off the precipice, towards blissful oblivion.

* * *

“But this is a normal crime scene,” PC Davidson says, a bit bewildered, when Suzie demands to gain access to the cordoned-off area. “There’s none of those spooky-dos that you and Captain Flash normally deal with. Gwen would have called if there was.”

Sometimes, Suzie despises that fact that on Gwen’s insistence, Torchwood has brought Andy Davidson on as an unofficial police liaison and become a lot more open to the Cardiff police. It used to be a lot easier to barge into places, flashing Torchwood or false IDs and taking over everything. Now, Suzie has to delegate and be diplomatic.

“We’ve picked up scans indicating a low level of energy out here on the crime scene,” Suzie tells PC Davidson, her expression completely sober. Her grip tightens on the strap of her bag, the very bag that contains the gauntlet. “It could have had something to do with the murder.”

“What kind of energy?” PC Davidson asks, sounding more than a little more skeptical. He shifts on his feet, the only barrier standing between Suzie and the dead body she can see face-down in the grass out there in the park.

Suzie bites back a sigh. “The kind of energy that causes these  _ spooky-dos  _ in Cardiff.” A beat. “Will you allow me inside to make sure the crime scene is safe? You wouldn’t want your officers being exposed…” She raises a sharp eyebrow. She can practically see the thoughts running through PC Davidson’s head, can see the moment he caves.

Shaking his head, he tells her, “I can get you ten minutes for you to have the crime scene to yourself, but that’s it.”

It takes approximately ten minutes for SOCO to clear the scene, time during which Suzie nearly crushes her bag handle. She’s not one to usually fidget, but she can feel the darkness twisted around her heart pulsing in time to the blood pumping through her veins. She would even nearly go as far to say that she  _ craves  _ the sensation of the blood burning through her veins, the  _ tug  _ on her heart, if she didn’t already know how dangerous that line of thinking is.

“It’s all yours,” PC Davidson says finally, lifting the crime scene tape so that Suzie can slip under it.

The grass is soggy and damp when she kneels down, and she suppresses a wince, setting her bag down besides her. Carefully, she rolls the body over; it’s a woman, in her late thirties, an obvious gunshot wound caving through part of her skull. A glance in either direction guarantees that no one is watching when Suzie pulls out the gauntlet and slips it on.

She sets her hand at the base of the body’s skull, cradling its head. She closes her eyes and  _ reaches  _ into the darkness. It’s easier this time, far easier than it’s ever been before. She doesn’t reach too far before she feels the familiar glow, the familiar warmth, of Bad Wolf, like the rays of the sun on her face. Without even realizing it, her lips slip into a smile. 

Suzie opens her eyes as the victim gasps back to life, eyes wide and horrified. There’s a second of pause as she and Suzie make eye contact. Then she begins screaming her head off.

Sighing, Suzie reaches down to cover the victim’s mouth, muffling her. She leans down to hiss into the victim’s ear, “Shut up. Don’t make  _ a sound. _ ”

Terrified, the victim nods, but Suzie doesn’t lift her hand. She glances up to find Bad Wolf smiling knowingly at her.

“Was this really necessary?” Bad Wolf asks Suzie, her eyebrows knitted together in amusement. 

“There’s no other way to actually see you,” Suzie replies. “It’s not like I can look you up on the Internet.”

“I think you should let her go,” Bad Wolf says, gesturing to the victim beneath Suzie. “She won’t be able to breathe. You don’t want to kill her before the connection fades.”

Suzie rolls her eyes. “She can breath through her nose.” Still, she eases up on her grasp, pulling her arm away. The victim continues to watch her in fear but quietly begins to babble to herself. Suzie ignores her. “Right then.”

“Right then,” agrees Bad Wolf. She advances towards Suzie, the glow in her eyes briefly dimming. She looks almost human, almost normal. “You’re certainly an interesting woman, Suzie Costello. Stubborn. Strong-minded. You think with your head, not your heart. You were the most drawn to the gauntlet out of all your colleagues.” She chuckles. “I was the opposite.”

“You were human once,” Suzie surmises. 

“I was.” Bad Wolf nods. “I was a very wide-eyed, idealistic human girl once. You would have hated me, would have called me naive. But I was swept away by the wonders of the universe, by a kind, dangerous traveller, and I paid for it with my life.” The glow in her eyes returns with full force, bright and golden. “I’m no longer human.” Her voice picks up a bit of a vibrato, a sense of something powerful... godly, almost. “I am time itself now. I created myself.  _ I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be. _ ” 

“That’s…  _ incredible, _ ” Suzie breathes. Briefly, the wispy darkness in her shifts, becomes actual golden  _ warmth _ under Bad Wolf’s gaze. Then it’s gone again, swallowed by the darkness. “You’re incredible.”

Has it surely not been a minute by now? Why is the victim still writhing on the ground, still babbling to herself? Why is she still alive?

“It’s been two,” Bad Wolf answers, and Suzie blinks at her in shock. “Yes, I can hear your thoughts. There’s very little I  _ can’t  _ do.” She smiles mischievously at Suzie. “I’ve very much enjoyed your dreams.”

As Suzie unexpectedly blushes, the victim slumps back to the ground by her knees, dead. Suzie glances down, glances back up again. Bad Wolf is still towering over her. 

“You’re still here.”

Bad Wolf tosses her head back and laughs, a rich, clear sound like honey or ancient bells. “I told you. There’s very little I can’t do.” Then she too fades, dissipating into the wind, into golden particles of time.

“Thank you,” Suzie says to PC Davidson as she passes him while leaving the park. He still looks bewildered but nods to her.

She can still feel Bad Wolf, she realizes. It feels almost as if the other woman, the  _ goddess,  _ is still standing beside Suzie as she walks towards her car. As if she never dissolved into the wind. She feels welcoming, warm and loving, at the odds with the sickening darkness clogging Suzie’s throat, choking her heart. She hadn’t realized just how bad it felt.

But it doesn’t matter. She can still breathe. Like Bad Wolf, the darkness too is almost welcoming, like an old friend.

* * *

It’s the same dream again, Suzie entangled so closely with Bad Wolf that they are essentially the same being, the same soul. Deep within her, Suzie can almost feel where the light from Bad Wolf nestles in the darkness in Suzie’s heart as Bad Wolf touches Suzie, traces her body with careful, tender hands. 

The warmth between Suzie’s thighs deepens, her desire for Bad Wolf a flickering flame, the light from a candle that grows into a wildfire as she tastes the sweetness of Bad Wolf’s lips again. She could continue kissing the other woman for an eternity, neither of them moving from this bed; she could grow addicted to that taste, could write sonnets about it if she were particularly gifted with words. As Suzie arches her back, pressing into Bad Wolf’s touch, a thought occurs to her - that the English language would fail spectacularly to capture the divinity that is her lover.

Is this love? Could it be? It is nothing like what Suzie has felt before; this she already knows.

Bad Wolf’s hair is a waterfall of golden braids that tumbles down her back when she kisses down the arc of Suzie’s neck, following a path down her shoulder and arm and all the way down to her fingertips. She presses a delicate kiss to each individual finger. Suzie sighs before gently shoving her lover aside. Carefully, she takes Bad Wolf’s hand in her own and guides it between Suzie’s legs.

They moan in unison as they touch Suzie, as they feel how damp she is together. Each stroke of Bad Wolf’s finger against Suzie sets her spine sparking with electricity and spurs that roaring fire she feels for the other woman.

Suzie snakes her other hand into Bad Wolf’s hair, trailing fingers across a braid and tugging slightly. Bad Wolf’s resounding hiss is almost a better sound than the encouragement and praise she murmurs into the skin of Suzie’s hips, painting bright marks with her lips, Suzie’s body her canvas. She nips gently and then rubs a thumb where Suzie is most sensitive until she sees colorful sparks explode across her vision. She cries out loudly.

Draping an arm around her lover’s neck, Suzie pulls Bad Wolf down to kiss again, lacing their fingers together, as the other woman continues to skillfully stroke between Suzie’s legs. Suzie sighs and moans and whimpers against her lover’s lips.

She never wants to part from Bad Wolf, from this bed.

But the morning light, breaking through the gap in Suzie’s curtains and into her subconscious, will not allow her to stay, and just like before, Suzie finds herself cruelly yanked back to reality.

Suzie sits up in the same bed, alone, her heart  _ aching  _ just as much as her cunt does. She sits up, sliding her own fingers between her legs, using her other hand to trace and touch her body where Bad Wolf had in her dream. The sensation is not the same, and when she pulses around her fingers, she sighs, this blissful oblivion she’s craving not entirely complete.

She falls back against her sheets, her body hot and sweaty, feeling unsatisfied, and nearly shivers when she feels the warmth of fingers brush against her cheek, moving slowly against her temples until they push a lock of hair behind her ear. Invisible lips are briefly pressed to hers in a reverent kiss, and she hears a hiss of  _ Suzie. _

Then the touch and the sensation of lips against hers are gone, but Suzie smiles.

She’s no longer alone.

* * *

“Suzie,” Jack calls, seeking her out where she’s been rummaging in the archives late one evening. He finds her in one of the stacks and stands at one end, arms crossed over his broad chest. His expression is calm, unchallenging, but she can see the tightness to his eyes, the strain in his smile. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

Shaking away a stray lock of hair that has slipped free of its clip, Suzie sighs, calling back, “Just a minute, Jack.” She places the artifact she was comparing to one of her sketches back on the shelf; Tosh had asked Ianto to retrieve it, but he had had one of his rare days off today, so it’d been left to Suzie, the second most well-versed member of the team in the workings of the archives. She used to maintain it before Ianto arrived, although it’d been one duty she’d been grateful to give up.

When she finally arrives before Jack his shoulders are tense, and he’s masking it badly. “I know what you’re doing,” he tells her.

“... What Tosh asked me to?” Suzie presumes. She grits her teeth, knowing that this will be one of  _ those  _ conversations, where they both dance around what they’re saying without an explicit reference. As it would seem, Jack has not been as oblivious to her extracurricular activities as she thought - and briefly, she wonders why she ever thought otherwise.

Then Jack surprises her. His nose flares as he admits, “I know you’ve been using the gauntlet. I know you’ve taken it from the Hub.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “The gauntlet?” she asks. “I took it days ago. Have you just noticed now?”

His eyes darken. Now, he grits his teeth, his jaw clenching. “You need to stop, Suzie. You can’t keep trying to play god. No one’s meant to control life and death. I’m a prime example of why.”

A flicker of rage begins to burn in her chest, the heat more intense than the wispy darkness that has become her constant companion. She focuses on that flame, lets it fuel her for this moment. Her fingers flex with the urge to ball into fists by her side, but she forces them flat against the sides of her thighs. 

Jack doesn’t know better, she reminds herself. He’s well-intentioned. He doesn’t know about Bad Wolf, doesn’t know how Suzie  _ needs _ her, can feel her warmth constantly by Suzie’s side. How everything else in Suzie’s life has gone cold but for Bad Wolf and her glow. 

Suzie looks at Jack, really  _ looks  _ at him, and sees for the first time the lingering darkness that’s always surrounded him. He’s drowning in it, this thick, wispy sea of  _ dark,  _ and there’s no light that she can see, none of that beautiful glow of time from Bad Wolf. If it is there, at least. She cannot tell. He’s drowning in this darkness, has been all along, and he doesn’t know it himself.

In that moment, Suzie realizes she pities him, pities this captain who brought her to Torchwood and showed her the wonders of the universe, pities this man caught hellishly between life and death, tossed mercilessly from one state to the next.

“If you had the ability, Jack,” she begins, eyes narrowed. “If you have the ability to become mortal, to stay in Ianto’s life, to stay by his side, to grow old with him, to not see Gwen or Tosh or Owen or any other friend or relative die before you do… would you not use it?” Her lips curl up into a smile that’s not intentionally cruel. “Would you not take that chance?”

He doesn’t reply. His mouth falls slack, his eyes widening, nostrils flaring. 

“I thought so,” Suzie says. Then she stalks away, leaving Jack cloaked in the shadows of the Hub.

* * *

They get word that a gang of Blowfish are running drugs out of a warehouse on the docks, and Jack wrestles away jurisdiction from the police. The entire team rides in the SUV to the harbor, fully armed. There’s even an emergency bazooka in the back, and Suzie’s bag is tucked under her seat in the front. It contains the gauntlet. She doesn’t always bring it along, but when she’d gone to toss supplies into her bag this morning, she’d seen the gauntlet sitting on her bedside table, as faux-innocently as could be - it’s never very far away from her nowadays - and she’d placed it into her bag after a moment of brief careful consideration, the web of darkness woven around her heart pulsing in time to her breathing.

In hindsight, she should have known it was a premonition. 

Jack orders her and Ianto to one end of the warehouse. Owen and Gwen are on the other end. Jack and Tosh are covering the emergency exit.

On Jack’s count over the comms, they bust down the doors. Suzie’s boot makes a very satisfying smacking sound against the wood as she kicks it in, and then they’re inside, in the gloomy, shadowed interior, very little light creeping down from the stained skylights.

The Blowfish are taken by surprise. The three nearest to Suzie and Ianto drop quickly, their bodies rippling from the force of the bullets. Owen and Gwen target a few more from their end, but there’s far more of them than Torchwood expected. They diverge through the warehouse, fleeing quickly, and Suzie silently signals for Ianto to follow one. She peels off in an opposite direction; over on the comms, Owen is shouting for Jack and Tosh to come in as reinforcements. 

As it turns out, drugs aren’t the only contraband this gang is involved in running; in the back of the warehouse, Suzie finds not her own Blowfish target but a whole cache of alien weapons. Large containers hold the likes of Torplin throwing stars, deadly and sharp enough to shred through skin like cotton, and Je’tem splinter bombs. Jack once described the aftermath of seeing one used on a very early Torchwood case. There was not enough of the victim left to identify him.

She raises her hand to the comm tucked securely in her ear. “Jack,” she says, “they’re better armed than we expected. Alien weapons.”

His response comes quickly, loud over Owen’s cursing: “Everyone, stay on guard. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. Do this as neatly as possible.”

When Suzie turns to face the other end of the narrow aisle, she catches sight of a gleam of orange scale in the darkness and the faint patter of footsteps. Someone hisses; the Blowfish is attempting to toy with her, but Suzie Costello is not one to be easily outwitted. She tightens her grip on her gun.

As she veers in a slow circle, gun raised, she hears another suspicious whisper. There is nothing now, nothing but the pulse of her heart and the quickening of her breath. The glow of Bad Wolf, the warmth of the darkness, that has all momentarily dulled.

Another whisper and a faint shrill scraping of metal against concrete. Quick as lightning, Suzie snaps around and fires off a single shot into the lurking darkness. She hears a sharp inhale of surprise and then a quiet  _ thud _ as the body hits the cement floor. Her lips briefly twitch into a grin before she heads back into the direction she came from, melting back into the shadows.

She returns just in time for tragedy.

Several Blowfish bodies lie scattered on the floor, blood pooling enough to darken the cement. Owen and Tosh have been cornered by two Blowfish with menacing machine guns. Across the warehouse, Ianto and Jack are side-by-side, Jack looming protectively over a wounded Gwen, facing off against the last few Blowfish.

The bullet from Suzie’s gun sinks into the back of a Blowfish’s skull with ease, and Tosh uses the other Blowfish’s distraction to whip her gun into his face, then fires a shot into his stomach. They dart across the warehouse, Owen in the lead. He pulls Gwen into a corner and begins to treat her wound with his pocket field kit. Suzie and Tosh join Ianto and Jack in overpowering the remaining Blowfish.

One of them peels off from his brethren and makes a break for it; Ianto and Jack pursue, but the Blowfish doesn’t make it far until he turns back around, two guns aimed at his head. He grins widely, brandishing a thin black disk. A Je’tem splinter bomb. The red light blinking on its edge indicates that it’s been armed. Jack grinds to an alarmed halt, yanking Ianto back.

“If I die,” the Blowfish hisses, eyes wide and frenzied, “I may die taking out some of you,  _ Torchwood. _ ”

“No, you don’t,” Jack says furiously, and Suzie watches the bullet from his gun embed itself into the Blowfish’s head in a vivid spray of blood and brain. Jack dives for the splinter bomb, and Ianto roars for him not to, that he’ll be torn apart. Suzie preemptively cringes, Tosh shooting the last Blowfish dead moments later. Jack will come back, but this resurrection will be painful. There’s nothing the team can do to help him; they are all scattered behind Jack and Ianto. They will be forced to watch Jack be excruciatingly shredded apart.

Except Jack made a single, unfortunate misjudgement. The angle of his shot forced the Blowfish forward, changing the vector of the splinter bomb. It arcs through the air, heading towards… Ianto. Then, it  _ explodes. _

Dust, blood, guts, and cement billow into the air, blinding them all. Someone screams, is screaming, but Suzie can only watch in horror, wait for the air to clear. When it does, the sight she finds will be burned into her brain for an eternity. All the Blowfish are dead on the warehouse floor. Ianto lies collapsed on the cement, his chest a shredded, gory mess; the splinter bomb must have exploded early, because he is still solid, a literal sea of blood having soaked through his suit and into Jack’s greatcoat. Jack is cradling him, his body, Ianto’s head braced against his chest, one hand at Ianto’s neck, feeling for a pulse, the other laced together with Ianto’s limp hand. His head is bowed, and they can all hear him quietly pleading for Ianto not to leave him, for Ianto not to die. 

In slow motion, her boots rooted to the gore-slicked cement, Suzie can only watch as Owen shoves Gwen against Tosh and races to Jack and Ianto’s side. He drops roughly to his knees, pushing Jack away to feel for Ianto’s pulse as well, but even before the dismay, the sorrow spreads across his face; even before Owen says it, Suzie knows. It’s too late.

Ianto Jones is dead.

Owen glances up, eyes wide and horrified, face pale, looking young,  _ so young. _ “He’s gone,” he says quietly, and Tosh makes a strangled sound. Even Gwen, woozy from the blood loss, clutches Tosh tighter, shaking her head in disbelief. “Ianto’s gone.”

“No,” Jack says, colder than ice, his cheeks damp with tears, cradling Ianto closer to him, leaning down to press hasty kisses to the pale planes of his face, to his lips, as if he can kiss the life back into his boyfriend, as he once did before. “He can’t be. He’s not dead.”

“Jack…” Owen begins softly, but it’s as if Jack’s refusal has shaken something loose in Suzie, something free. She turns and races from the warehouse. No one calls after her.

The SUV is locked, but she’s always known how to jimmy it open; she’s one of the people who helped design its security measures. She yanks her bag out from under the seat and darts back towards the warehouse, her lungs aching as she pants.

Dropping to her knees beside Jack, she shoves him none-too-gently aside and pulls Ianto’s body into her lap, ignoring his feeble protests. Owen watches her warily, a comforting hand pressed onto Jack’s shoulders. Suzie places her bag at her side, trying to ignore how her friend is cold and still in her arms, and reaches inside, withdrawing the gauntlet.

Jack makes a noise of complaint, and Owen says something that she disregards as she presses her hand inside the gauntlet, fitting it tightly before wiggling her fingers and watching the smooth metal of the gauntlet move. The inside is cold, familiar, like holding the hand of an old friend.

Suzie places her hand at the base of Ianto’s skull, murmuring her apologies into his hair. Jack’s eyes widen, finally, in understanding.

“Suzie, no,” he orders, regaining some of the ferocity they’re familiar with. “ _ You can’t. _ ”

She ignores him. She  _ reaches  _ into the darkness. 

It parts easily for her, far more easily than it has done before, but Ianto isn’t there; he isn’t within reach as the other human dead had been. Nor is there the warm, addictive glow of Bad Wolf, of time. Suzie craves her, misses her dearly, misses her like a missing limb, like the other half of her broken soul. She delves deeper into the darkness.

But she can’t find Ianto, can’t sense his familiar presence. So she creeps in further, no Bad Wolf to guide her, until the darkness smothering her heart  _ spreads,  _ sending its roots burrowing between her ribs and filling her chest and rising high enough to flood her lungs, thick yet also wispy and inky and burning with the warm intensity with which it scorches in her veins. She reached into the darkness, but now it’s  _ tugging  _ her in, using its grasp around her heart to drag her further into its treacherous depths. 

Suzie coughs; she tries to yell, to scream, but the darkness muffles her sounds. She can feel Ianto’s weight in her lap, the gauntlet on her hand, hear Jack and Owen and Gwen and Tosh calling for her, but it’s as if a layer of film is slowly being peeled away from her perception, as she shifts further and further away from reality, towards the darkness. 

She tries to call for Bad Wolf but to no avail; the other woman is nowhere to be found. Nor is Ianto. It is only the darkness now; she’s drowning in it, its warmth searing. It no longer feels welcoming; it’s poisonous, dangerous, deadly,  _ death,  _ and she recognizes that now, far too late.

Her body collapses, and her mind, her soul, becomes untethered from reality and life, existing only on this plane of darkness. 

The darkness wants her. It wants to consume her; it wants to control her; it wants to destroy her. Suzie can feel its  _ want,  _ its  _ need,  _ emanating throughout this wispy sea, this liminal space between life and death. That need radiates in her bones, in her blood. She can feel what the darkness wants; she wants that too, because the darkness  _ wants.  _ The darkness is winning. It is consuming her. 

But Suzie Costello is a woman with a will of iron and a mind worth more than its weight in gold. She’s always wielded her wit, her intelligence, as a blade. And this is a duel to the death. Against death.

“ _ No, _ ” Suzie says, and her voice is unearthly as it echoes through the darkness, many voices united as one but all still Suzie Costello. “You do not command me. I command  _ you. _ ”

The darkness is not one to easily yield, but as it continues to attempt to choke and break Suzie, she breaks  _ it  _ instead. She consumes it, sucking the darkness from its inky void into herself. She’s drowning in the darkness again, but this time she’s controlling the tide. She’s standing on the tips of her toes in this sea, but she’s keeping her head afloat, keeping herself swimming. And as she consumes the darkness, lets it continue to fill the void inside her body, wrap itself around her bones, tether its place around her heart, and collect in her throat, she finds that she can still breathe. It’s no longer choking her. She will not let it.

And when she finally absorbs the last of the darkness, a different kind of darkness is revealed, a softer, velvet vastness of the universe, of space and of iridescent stars that twinkle in shades beyond the imagination and of a gorgeous woman floating in all this vastness, glowing with unbelievable golden time. Her eyes are a lovely brown but also amber but also  _ light.  _ Her hair is a sunny cascade of braids down her back, and her robes have been battered by time itself. 

She is Bad Wolf. She is Time. She is life itself, and Suzie? Suzie is her other half, the flip side of the same coin. She is death, and Bad Wolf is life, and together, they fit together as puzzle pieces, completing the universe, keeping it balanced. 

Bad Wolf approaches her, and Suzie approaches Bad Wolf, drifting easily through the universe. But they are still not alone. Suzie wishes for them to be alone, but there’s another, someone who she’d been searching for, someone who’d followed her through the darkness, into the universe.

He’s tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired, dressed in the impeccable suit he wore when he died. His expression is placid. He is unblinking, unaware of anything, nearly an existenceless entity, but every other moment, he will phase between life and death, as he currently is, and his torso will become a shredded, gory mess, his skin pallid, his eyes lifeless. He’s Ianto Jones, and Suzie came here to find him, because there’s someone beyond this darkness who loves him, who wants him back. Because somewhere beyond this darkness, he meant something to her, even if she can no longer remember what.

Ianto is wanted on the other side and not here, so Suzie reaches for him and pulls him back into phase, shoves him back into life. Like a candle’s flame, he flickers briefly before being snuffed out of this plane of existence, back on the other. And Suzie breathes a sigh of relief, for she and Bad Wolf are finally alone.

“Hello, Suzie,” Bad Wolf says, striding forward and forward, drifting closer until she can nearly take Suzie’s hands in her own. “You finally made the choice, I see. I’ve been waiting.”

“For far too long,” replies Suzie. She grins. She understands what choice Bad Wolf meant now. “You are no longer alone.” She steps closer.

“Nor are you,” Bad Wolf tells her and reaches for her.

When they finally touch, a thousand stars explode across Suzie’s skin. There is a feeling in her, the pressure of the bubbles of sparkling champagne finally being released, of electricity arcing up her spine, of the universe dying and being reborn, all in a single touch. She is awash with a blanket of golden time. 

When they finally touch, it’s an orgasm, but when they finally kiss… it’s beyond belief, beyond imagination. Suzie finally understands the harmonies she heard in her dreams, Bad Wolf and the darkness singing in unison, a sense of  _ togetherness.  _ Their souls have been reunited, light and dark weaving so tightly together again that Suzie can feel it in her chest when Bad Wolf breathes. Every touch is magnified, every thought all the more powerful.

This is what it feels to be complete, Suzie now knows. She is complete, and she is indomitable. She is forever changed.

She was Suzie Costello, she is Suzie Costello, and she is death itself.

* * *

The Hub is silent. Everything has changed. One of their own died yet was brought back, came back, but another one of their own didn’t.

Suzie’s body lies on the autopsy table. She’s still fully dressed, but Owen has pulled a sheet over her; no one can dare look at the body that, as of several hours ago, was breathing, moving, fighting, talking. The body that, as of several hours ago, was their friend. 

The team is scattered around the Hub, Owen sitting in his chair in the medbay, face buried in his hands. Tosh sits beside him, gripping his knee tightly, staring off at a wall. Gwen is laying over on the couch, turned to face away from the medbay, her expression frozen, tear tracks dried on her cheeks. Jack sits on the floor, leaning against Suzie’s workstation. Ianto is pulled against his side, clutched tightly for dear life, their legs tangled together. They’ve been holding hands ever since they left the warehouse, as if Jack is afraid that if he lets go of Ianto, Ianto will slip away like smoke.

The Hub is silent. Torchwood is grieving. Everything has changed.

* * *

Her body is cold when she awakes, her eyes slowly fluttering open to gaze hazily up at bright, fluorescent lights that seem gauzy, far away. She shivers; she doesn’t know why. As far as she can tell, she is still clothed. But she can still feel this preternatural chill that lingers in her bones. It doesn’t hurt, isn’t uncomfortable. Just feels odd. 

She inhales sharply, her fingers twitching. Slowly, she shifts a leg, and the fabric covering her flutters. It’s a sheet covering her entire body, she realizes. She’s been covered as a corpse would be. The thought comes into being lightning fast, the synapses in her brain sparking with electricity, and she realizes that she can feel them. She can feel every atom in her body in alignment, and she can feel every drop of blood in her body, every single bone. This phenomena extends beyond her; there are five others she can feel nearby.

Carefully, she pushes the sheet off her body and sits upright, glancing around. She’s in the Hub, lying on the autopsy table. Why was she treated as if she had died?

Owen is the first to react. He lifts his head from his hands, gaping at her, and jumps to his feet, Tosh beside him. He reaches for her, and Tosh calls to her, but she ignores them, sliding to her feet. 

Seeing them brings everything into perspective. She can see Owen and Tosh, but she can also  _ feel  _ them, can feel the force of their lives radiating off of them as bright as the sun, can feel the years that they’ll live, can see how they’ll die. She knows that she can cause it, too, can rip that life force from them so easily, tug on that thread and smother them with darkness. Humans… they’re so fragile.

But why would she? Before she disappeared into the darkness, she was Suzie Costello. She is still Suzie Costello, and Suzie Costello would never. The part of Suzie that recognizes Owen and Tosh knows them as her friends, it knows not to ever touch them; it loves her team, her friends, her family.

Suzie stalks forward, and Owen and Tosh follow her. She tunes them out. They mean well, but they are only being a bother now, following her like little lost lambs. As Suzie passes the couch, Gwen shifts too, protesting, watching her in concerned caution. Tosh helps her to her feet, and together they all follow Suzie, Gwen limping.

Jack’s expression is fierce as he clutches Ianto’s hand, the other hand slightly unsteady on his feet. Ianto is just like the others; Suzie can see his life force, can see where the glowing threads tying him to his body, tying him to life, were broken and repaired. Even one of Gwen’s threads is frayed, but Suzie can see it being repaired.

Jack, oh, Jack is different. Jack is  _ wrong.  _ Jack glows brighter than the rest; the glow has replaced the darkness that Suzie had once seen smothering him. Jack glows brighter, but she can see the web of death that stretches out beyond him, the tangle of threads, frayed and snapped but knotted and re-knotted or woven over. There’s something tying Jack Harkness to life, something tethering his web of threads, his web of death, that won’t let him die.

Suzie clicks her tongue. Unfortunate, that. She moves past, heading towards the cog wheel door, and her team follows her. 

At a wave of her fingers, a mere wrinkle of her willpower against the universe, the cog wheel door rolls aside, red lights blinking, alarm ringing. Unbothered, Suzie saunters through and down the short hallway to the entrance behind the tourist office. The others have disappeared, but Suzie knows they’ll be back.

From the tourist office, Suzie steps onto the Plass, and suddenly she can see them all, all these humans, all these small, inconsequential beings with too much heart. They keep moving, keep walking and chatting and moving through their lives, unaware that Suzie stands in their midst, unaware that Suzie can determine the journey of their remaining years.

But Suzie cares not for them, for her attention has already been caught. There is a woman waiting for her here on the Plass, solid and completely out of place in faded robes and leather, her eyes glowing, but also completely unnoticed by passersby. Only Suzie can see her, because only Suzie knows to. And Bad Wolf only wants only Suzie to see her as well.

“You’re here,” Suzie says, grinning widely as she steps towards Bad Wolf, who draws Suzie into her arms. They embrace, their lips meeting together, and while it feels no different from a normal kiss, Suzie can still feel a muted explosion of pleasure, a subdued version of what she’d felt when they’d first embraced. It’s an inconvenience of this fragile world, that it cannot feel what Suzie and Bad Wolf did for risk of being destroyed, but no bother. It will soon be cast aside. “You’re finally here.” And as their lips drift apart, Suzie slides a gentle hand to cup Bad Wolf’s cheek. The other woman leans into her touch.

“Yes,” Bad Wolf agrees, “I am. I’m here by your side.” Her hand comes up to cover Suzie’s against her cheek, their fingers twining together. “Shall we leave? The universe awaits us.”

Suzie shakes her head. “Not yet. I have some business remaining here, first.” And as gently as she can, she parts from Bad Wolf’s grasp and turns. The entire team is watching her and Bad Wolf, armed with guns. Jack is the first, positioned before Ianto and the others like a shield, and when Suzie steps away to reveal the other woman, his fierce expression changes, flashing with sudden pain and grief. Suzie feels a faint flicker of human confusion; she thought she understood everything there is in the world, but this, she doesn’t.

“ _ Rose? _ ” Jack gasps, and his voice is thick, his eyes brimming with shocked tears. “Rose? Is that you?” He inhales sharply, taking a step forward. Ianto reaches for him, but his hand catches on nothing; Jack is always too far from his grasp. “How could it be? The Doctor said you were dead.”

Bad Wolf approaches Jack, and they come face-to-face but do not touch. By the other woman’s side, Suzie can see Bad Wolf’s smile falter, the glow in her eyes briefly diminishing to reveal a lovely shade of brown, and her own heart skips a beat.

“I was,” Bad Wolf tells Jack. “When I was human, I was Rose Tyler, and I loved you, and for that, you suffered.” Her smile returns, pained, regretful. “You’ve been suffering.”

Jack blinks in surprise. “What did you mean  _ when you were human?  _ Rose, what happened to you?”

“I’m so sorry, Jack Harkness,” Bad Wolf says, and Suzie can from the crinkling of her eyes, from the flexing of her lips, that she’s suppressing a frown.

Jack won’t understand. He can try, but he will not be able to. Suzie knows what will be better. 

She reaches for Bad Wolf’s hand again, twining their fingers together. Their souls are intertwined; Suzie can feel every bit of Bad Wolf resonating in her, like a beautiful melody she didn’t realize she knew the words to. They are complete again.

Light and dark. Life and death. Bad Wolf and Suzie. Rose and Suzie. Suzie can feel that the other half of her heart, of her soul, knows what to do.

Together, they reach for Jack Harkness. He is a marionette in their hands, and they undo the many strings that hold him aloft. Skilled fingers undo knots and detangle threads, stripping him of the extra  _ life,  _ of the immortality that keeps him coming back, until there’s one thread left, and it’s old and weathered, but Suzie knows it’s long and will last a long time.

Jack collapses to the ground, unconscious, and Ianto comes rushing up to grab him, to cradle Jack in his lap as he’s done so many times before, as Jack had done to him only hours previous. Hard to think it’s merely been hours. It feels like an eternity. Suzie’s lived and died so many lifetimes in the blink of a human eye.

“What have you done?” snarls Ianto, eyes wide in horror, his gun aimed between Bad Wolf and Suzie, as if he cannot decide his target.

He doesn’t have to. Lazily, Suzie flicks her fingers, and Torchwood watches in shock as Ianto’s gun dissolves into dark, shadowy particles, whipped away by a sudden wind. The rest of the Plass is still, life continuing normally for these humans, the team and these two goddesses shadowed and hidden by the world.

“He’ll live, Ianto,” Suzie tells him dryly, and for a moment, she sounds so much like the Suzie Costello that Ianto actually knows that he blinks. “Jack will live, but he will also die, one last time, by your side.”

“You can’t mean…” Gwen gasps, and Suzie nods.

“I do, Gwen. I do mean that,” she says. “We did it for Jack, did it to Jack. I owe him that much for everything he did for me.”

But their work is still not done, and Bad Wolf recognizes this, her grasp tightening around Suzie’s hand. She takes Suzie’s other hand, and Suzie’s eyes flicker shut. She can feel the warmth inside herself, the darkness wrapped around her heart, but now, it’s there because she wants it there. She keeps the darkness there, tethered to herself. It is also every part of her, burrowed between her cells, burrowed between every atom of her being. The darkness is she, and she is also the darkness, in the same way that the light is Bad Wolf, and Bad Wolf is the light, but that Bad Wolf is also Rose Tyler.

These women, these powerful women that they are, they contain multitudes.

Between Rose’s light and her dark tangled together, there exists the universe, and Suzie can feel every inch of it. She can feel where it’s stretched thin, where it’s worn and old or elastic and new. She can feel every single tear in time and space, every single rip in the universe’s fabric, every single rift. This Rift, she can feel this Rift in Cardiff. 

It shouldn’t be here. It shouldn’t be open. It’s an abnormality. She knows this, and she can feel that Rose knows this. Together, they reach for that tear, and they seal it, pulling both opposing ends of the universe and knitting them back together and snipping away the spare bits of reality left dangling. An extra accidental pocket universe would be a bad thing.

This corner of the universe repaired, Suzie opens her eyes to find Rose’s eyes flickering open as well. They smile at each other, caught in a moment together. But there are others waiting. No worries. Suzie and Rose have an eternity for each other.

“You won’t be bothered any more,” Rose tells a shocked Torchwood - Ianto holding onto a bleary Jack, Gwen gaping, Owen and Tosh with their hands linked. “Cardiff will be left alone, until it’s time for everything to change, that is.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Tosh says quietly.

Suzie chuckles. Naive, well-intentioned human. “We can,” she says, “because we made it so.” They are light and dark, life and death; anything is possible for them.

“Now, you’ll live,” Rose says, her smile faint but knowing. “You’ll live, and you’ll continue with your human lives, and one day, you will forget all about us.”

“Until you die, that is,” adds Suzie. “We’ll be reunited then, but there is still so much time before any of you will meet your end. Don’t squander any of it.”

“Where will the two of you go?” Jack asks, his astute gaze flickering down to their linked hands. 

“Anywhere,” Suzie replies. “All of time and space is open to us. Beyond, as well.”

“We can go anywhere,” agrees Rose, “as long as it’s together.”

Light and dark, life and death, balanced, together, they step out of phase with reality and into a dimension not of this universe, never to be seen again but always to be felt.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rajkumarinik). I tweet and reblog mostly Torchwood with occasionally amusing commentary on nonsense. Please come talk to me and tell me if/how much you like my fic or like ask me about it on tumblr; all my schoolwork has become remote now, and I have limited social interaction.


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